Reading for pleasure can better develop imagination and language skills than watching TV. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.

　　If you could enjoy reading, the realm of books would become some kind of paradise which is not to be experienced in watching television solely for entertainment. Study after study has shown how those who read for pleasure achieve more in literacy standards and thinking abilities than those who do not. Probably there is nothing else which will so much expand your language skills and make your imagination fly.

　　To begin with, language skills, such as possessing a wide range of lexical resources, can be better learned through reading for pleasure than through watching TV for entertainment. At its best, television can be educational as well as entertaining, but nobody should wish to raise literacy levels by simply sitting in front of a TV box. So, it is only by reading can you enrich your vocabulary. However, it must be made clear that the link between literacy and reading is like comparing health to sport. One is something functional, the other is something you do because you enjoy it. That is to say, the more you enjoy reading, the more language skills you would obtain, independent of whether you like to watch TV or not.

　　The books that help you most in imagination are those which make you think the most. Such is an immense pleasure--that sort of pleasure which a cow must have in grazing. In this light, reading for pleasure, both paper-based and on-screen, is far more beneficial than watching TV. For instance, there is always a book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit: imagination. Unfortunately, some people's love of books is being ruined by television, which may be considered as a decline in thinking abilities. This is happening particularly to young people who seem to be shunning books in favour of TV; and, as a result, roughly 70 percent of those questioned prefer watching TV to reading in their own time, according to a nation-wide research.

　　On the whole, watching TV is largely harmless as an entertainment and information tool, but there is no better way to enhance your language skills and imagination than reading for pleasure. For those who would continue to enjoy reading as much as, or more than watching TV, there is a paradise not yet being lost. Having acquired an amount of language skills through wide and deep reading, you might as well imagine that such a paradise would not be very unlike a kind of library, or perhaps that part of Eden which is called "Adobe".